How High
by Cozzybob
Summary: Auda contemplates Quatre, samurais, and test tube babies.


**How High**

Pairing: Auda pov, mentions of Rashid and Quatre.

Warning: Second-person POV, general tenseness, some violence, language.

Note: For gw500's two character challenge, "Rashid and Auda," after wondering how our favorite little blond gundam pilot managed to gain the fanatic loyalty of 80 terrorists so effortlessly.

Summary: Auda contemplates Quatre, samurais, and test tube babies.

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When you crawled from your test tube on June 7th, 10,041 BC, Rashid likes to say you were laughing like a lunatic. He's full of shit of course, but you like to hear him say it, because it reminds you that you, he and Abdul have been true brothers in arms long before you ever met a scrawny little blond on the wrong ship, at the wrong time. Still, you understand what draws your brothers to the Winner heir like moths to his flaming sea-blue eyes.

He isn't a test tube baby at all, he's not one of you, not even where it counts, and it's truly freakin' fascinating in the end that you all follow him without a second thought anyway. Mostly because Quatre has no idea that he doesn't belong in the first place, that he's really above you and your brothers, and belongs on a pedestal with every other great benefit to humanity. Knowing that, it's no wonder he's become your little blond leader. He says, "Jump," Rashid nods in that cavebrow way of his, and asks, "How high, sir?"

The Winner boy doesn't know, and he doesn't know that you know, but you do, and sometimes this bothers you, even if it mostly doesn't. It doesn't matter because you're a test tube baby with little rights to complain about higher authority, and you haven't told Rashid any of this. You were happy as a clam from the day of your birth, and it's been hard for you to be too terribly upset over anything these days, thus you aren't going to go out and stir up the waters. You're a lover, not a fighter; you came right out of the tube laughing like the lovable git you are, and you don't really see Quatre as a fraud so much as an amusing joke you never dare tell to anyone, because you know a secret that could destroy everything.

You're all grown men, following the whims of a natural born pre-teen with daddy issues big enough to whip even Rashid into his proper dog-like purpose. As nothing more than test tube babies, you're probably better off, following someone with the natural talent anyway. Quatre is better than all of you. He _does_ need to be protected, you know this. You also know that Quatre is everything you've always wanted to be, deep down in the place your brothers will never speak of.

You've always been unflappably happy, but sometimes you think of the way your brothers follow a little boy's psychotic shotel-clad gundam, and you wonder why you ever joined this war in the first place. It's another thing you'd never tell Rashid: watching the little boys fight makes you sick. Not because you worry about Quatre, and it isn't because they're little boys fighting in a war way over their heads. It's because, again, that's not you. And though you know the cost of everything Quatre has given to fight the way that he does, and for no other purpose than making a difference, you envy all that he has to his name, you envy his perfect selflessness and all his wonderful, natural born glory. You envy the fear and trembling of his presence, the way his voice can carry such weight in a tiny stature, when he commands the samurai loyalty of eighty brothers in arms. You envy the way you kneel, nod, and salute to your miniature god. Somewhere along the way, you've missed the point of everything, even your own identity.

You would fall on your own sword if he asked you to, and that terrifies you. But Rashid doesn't know that, because you'd never tell. Because Quatre would never ask. Because it's hard for you to stay jaded, to stay envious or even bitter. You love Quatre. Quatre is your leader, your god. Your everything. Without Quatre, being a Maganac is like being a sailor without a captain. A captain without a ship.

You laugh.

That's the weird thing about test tube babies, really; since they aren't squeezed out the old fashioned way, they just sort of lie there and giggle and stare at the world with wide, unblinking eyes. You like to pretend that your first vision of the world was watching the doctors pass by your little glass prison, but you don't remember. You've seen it, though. Your wife, killed in an Alliance raid on L3, sent you pictures of your little boy encased in glass on a shelf with hundreds of others. Fetal, swimming on high-tech fluids, breathing through a tiny tube hooked to an apparatus that claimed to be motherly and more or less just terrified the living shit out of you for reasons unknown. It seemed cold and impersonal when you went to see him, and you remember having a hard time trying to convince yourself that the little ball of flesh in that jar was your son at all. You hadn't shed a tear when he died in the raid with his mother, though every now and then you remember it and kill your enemy with just the right brutal flair, rage pouring from your lips like dragon's breath. But even then, it's Quatre's name you cry out, and you can't even remember what you were going to call your son in the first place. You've long forgotten your wife's face. You don't remember how you fell in love with her, nor the making love.

Winner is your battle cry, your reason for everything that you do. Nothing else matters. You tell yourself that with every death: nothing else matters, but Him.

It's all blind zealotry in the end, and you know that too, even if you never say it.

You aren't sure why you smile anymore, but you do it because it's who you are, and your brothers expect it from you. Rashid claps you on the back after missions, gives you your orders and then meets Quatre in his tent with the butler who serves tea in pink china on a platter in the middle of the desert. They talk about the space heart, and they discuss what the little blond leader's next move should be.

You follow your orders without question, because it's what you do, and this makes you happy. But sometimes you wonder. Sometimes, you can't help it.

Most of the time, you ask how high.

--Fini


End file.
